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I, Cunningham
Gordon Cunningham, an ordinary citizen of 22nd century Earth, died in an unfortunate accident.
Except he didn't die. Not really.
Instead, he woke up stuck inside a robot. In the 29th century. Thirteen light-years from home. In a space station. Which is orbiting a planet that was meant to be a new home for the colonists. Unfortunately, everything went wrong.
He was brought back to life by accident, but the station denizens need him. Their colony is failing. Most colonists have lost hope. The AI in charge can't do much, which is somewhat moot, since it's out of ideas.
But Cunningham is a reluctant hero at best. He's disoriented by his new body. He doesn't know anything about his new environment. He doesn't trust the station's authorities. And yet, somehow, he must help them.
Or, in less than a century, no one human will remain.
Join him as he discovers his new home, his new body, and, perhaps, his new... mind?
Except he didn't die. Not really.
Instead, he woke up stuck inside a robot. In the 29th century. Thirteen light-years from home. In a space station. Which is orbiting a planet that was meant to be a new home for the colonists. Unfortunately, everything went wrong.
He was brought back to life by accident, but the station denizens need him. Their colony is failing. Most colonists have lost hope. The AI in charge can't do much, which is somewhat moot, since it's out of ideas.
But Cunningham is a reluctant hero at best. He's disoriented by his new body. He doesn't know anything about his new environment. He doesn't trust the station's authorities. And yet, somehow, he must help them.
Or, in less than a century, no one human will remain.
Join him as he discovers his new home, his new body, and, perhaps, his new... mind?
316 pages, ebook
Published June 29, 2020
10 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 30, 2022
I was charmed by the Asimov homage in the title and this book did not disappoint - it was a worthy love letter to the great old monsters of science fiction, and was a simple yet suitably dizzying read. And it had footnotes!
Now, I have some kinks when it comes to reading. I love a good infodump, which plenty of readers and authors and would-be how-to gurus say is a no-no. I also enjoy footnotes, whether they are Pratchettesque asides or full-blown Weis-Hickmanian essays in appendix form. When I opened this book to find a self-effacing pre-emptive apology for the over-explaining, the references, and the footnotes to come, I felt a mingling of anticipation and trepidation. Antrepidation, if you will.
And okay. I'm a pretty niche reader so take my gleeful approval with a planetoid of salt. And some of the footnotes were a bit over-explainy even for me. We know what EVA stands for and if we don't, let people learn some things for themselves. But overall I loved the narrator voice in this, and there is no way to satisfy my appetite for infodumps. I will devour infodumps of a magnitude 1990s Tor Publishing would balk at, and then look around as if to say "what, no more dumps?"
So.
----
Gordon Cunningham, an ordinary citizen of 22nd century Earth, died in an unfortunate accident.
Except he didn't die. Not really.
Instead, he woke up stuck inside a robot. In the 29th century. Thirteen light-years from home. In a space station. Which is orbiting a planet that was meant to be a new home for the colonists. Unfortunately, everything went wrong.
----
We open on a strange yet engaging little action sequence, featuring characters with pointy ears and ordinal surnames attempting to get through a space-station-shuttle-jump-type scenario. These are "Alts", as opposed to the "Stocks" that are regular humans, and immediately lets us know where we are (space), when we are (the future) and what's going on (future space shit). Welcome to Demeter.
Our fish out of water outsider protagonist is then introduced in - well, as you see in the little bit of blurb I quoted, a jarring and entertaining way. Gordon Cunningham, regular 22nd-Century guy, suddenly finds himself in the avatar of a robot on a space station above the planet Wolf 1061 in the 29th Century. And the story unfolds from there.
I think the story could have leaned more into the concept of Cunningham being a man out of time, a time traveller of sorts figuring out the Eloi-Morlock dynamic of the Demeter branch of the human race. It would have given us more opportunity to examine the 22nd Century, which is still the future to us readers (thus setting it aside a bit from the usual time-travel narrative). However, that wasn't what this story was ultimately about, for better or worse. Instead it is sort of ... narrated from the 21st Century perspective, about the 22nd Century, as well as the 29th. Which was kind of clumsy at times but I see what the ultimate storytelling goal was there.
The role Cunningham is assigned and the mission he was sent on is weirdly open and unexplained for quite a long time too. The station leadership and the AI (named Station) just sort of let him wander around and push buttons, which struck me as odd. There is some lampshading about why Station didn't do anything about the deteriorating situation before Cunningham's "arrival", but it still didn't really answer the question. Surely Station could have found someone to help, some other approach. Oh well.
Throughout the ensuing culture-shock and sci-fi espionage sequences, Cunningham has strange bouts of "sleepiness" during which he has dreams. These are fascinating, because while it is immediately clear what is happening during these scenes, they continue to unfold and contextualise while Cunningham himself is coming to terms with a situation that's complex enough on its face. Really nicely done.
The story also involved a little switching between first- and third-person narrative (literally "I, Cunningham" in some sections and then just "Cunningham" in others). I found it a bit disorienting (let's be generous and say that was by design, so that's on me but it still didn't really work for me) and unnecessary, but sure, it kind of worked.
All in all, I really enjoyed this and only have minor personal quibbles. Things like:
- There are some small editorial and language issues, things like "She just washed her hands with us" (should have been "washed her hands of us")
- 63% into the story and only now Cunningham suddenly twigs that this whole human upload thing isn't normal? It also took him way too long to figure out (and he still had to be told by Station, and he was outraged) the truth about his "death" in his 30s
- The final act's series of explanations seemed a little overcomplicated and had too many moving tech-parts, but I'm inclined to forgive it. The idea of true AI and human hybridisation is interesting, and since my only complaint is that it doesn't fit into my conception of sci-fi AIs, it's not really a valid complaint
So let's take a quick look at the meters. Like Goudreault-Emond says himself:
----
Content warning: the book presents only minimal violence and no sexual content. That said, the main character does use four letter swear words when life throws him a curve ball. Please bear with Mr. Cunningham; to say his day starts on the wrong foot is quite the understatement.
----
Sex-o-meter
As Goudreault-Emond says, there's no sex. A little bit of male gaze and boobies-and-booty description, but nothing too troubling. And Cunningham is pretty self-aware about it (no pun intended). I give this one a Bicentennial Man out of a possible Bi Centennial Man.
Gore-o-meter
Again, there's nothing much. There's action, some fight scenes and a whole lot of assorted sci-fi danger (Demeter is a rough place), but no gore. Half a flesh-gobbet out of a possible five.
WTF-o-meter
And there's not even much WTF, although the whole issue of human / AI symbiosis and parallel evolution is interesting, and the final chapters really blow things open and make for a very compelling backdrop for the past and future of the Demeter civilisation. Still, I'm only getting negligible WTF readings. I, Cunningham gets a mildly-disfigured dude with a vape pen out of a possible Guild Navigator on the WTF-o-meter.
My Final Verdict
Three and a half stars, which I will bump up to four for the Amazon / Goodreads scale because this sort of storytelling might not be for everyone, but it's for me and this is my review.
Now, I have some kinks when it comes to reading. I love a good infodump, which plenty of readers and authors and would-be how-to gurus say is a no-no. I also enjoy footnotes, whether they are Pratchettesque asides or full-blown Weis-Hickmanian essays in appendix form. When I opened this book to find a self-effacing pre-emptive apology for the over-explaining, the references, and the footnotes to come, I felt a mingling of anticipation and trepidation. Antrepidation, if you will.
And okay. I'm a pretty niche reader so take my gleeful approval with a planetoid of salt. And some of the footnotes were a bit over-explainy even for me. We know what EVA stands for and if we don't, let people learn some things for themselves. But overall I loved the narrator voice in this, and there is no way to satisfy my appetite for infodumps. I will devour infodumps of a magnitude 1990s Tor Publishing would balk at, and then look around as if to say "what, no more dumps?"
So.
----
Gordon Cunningham, an ordinary citizen of 22nd century Earth, died in an unfortunate accident.
Except he didn't die. Not really.
Instead, he woke up stuck inside a robot. In the 29th century. Thirteen light-years from home. In a space station. Which is orbiting a planet that was meant to be a new home for the colonists. Unfortunately, everything went wrong.
----
We open on a strange yet engaging little action sequence, featuring characters with pointy ears and ordinal surnames attempting to get through a space-station-shuttle-jump-type scenario. These are "Alts", as opposed to the "Stocks" that are regular humans, and immediately lets us know where we are (space), when we are (the future) and what's going on (future space shit). Welcome to Demeter.
Our fish out of water outsider protagonist is then introduced in - well, as you see in the little bit of blurb I quoted, a jarring and entertaining way. Gordon Cunningham, regular 22nd-Century guy, suddenly finds himself in the avatar of a robot on a space station above the planet Wolf 1061 in the 29th Century. And the story unfolds from there.
I think the story could have leaned more into the concept of Cunningham being a man out of time, a time traveller of sorts figuring out the Eloi-Morlock dynamic of the Demeter branch of the human race. It would have given us more opportunity to examine the 22nd Century, which is still the future to us readers (thus setting it aside a bit from the usual time-travel narrative). However, that wasn't what this story was ultimately about, for better or worse. Instead it is sort of ... narrated from the 21st Century perspective, about the 22nd Century, as well as the 29th. Which was kind of clumsy at times but I see what the ultimate storytelling goal was there.
The role Cunningham is assigned and the mission he was sent on is weirdly open and unexplained for quite a long time too. The station leadership and the AI (named Station) just sort of let him wander around and push buttons, which struck me as odd. There is some lampshading about why Station didn't do anything about the deteriorating situation before Cunningham's "arrival", but it still didn't really answer the question. Surely Station could have found someone to help, some other approach. Oh well.
Throughout the ensuing culture-shock and sci-fi espionage sequences, Cunningham has strange bouts of "sleepiness" during which he has dreams. These are fascinating, because while it is immediately clear what is happening during these scenes, they continue to unfold and contextualise while Cunningham himself is coming to terms with a situation that's complex enough on its face. Really nicely done.
The story also involved a little switching between first- and third-person narrative (literally "I, Cunningham" in some sections and then just "Cunningham" in others). I found it a bit disorienting (let's be generous and say that was by design, so that's on me but it still didn't really work for me) and unnecessary, but sure, it kind of worked.
All in all, I really enjoyed this and only have minor personal quibbles. Things like:
- There are some small editorial and language issues, things like "She just washed her hands with us" (should have been "washed her hands of us")
- 63% into the story and only now Cunningham suddenly twigs that this whole human upload thing isn't normal? It also took him way too long to figure out (and he still had to be told by Station, and he was outraged) the truth about his "death" in his 30s
- The final act's series of explanations seemed a little overcomplicated and had too many moving tech-parts, but I'm inclined to forgive it. The idea of true AI and human hybridisation is interesting, and since my only complaint is that it doesn't fit into my conception of sci-fi AIs, it's not really a valid complaint
So let's take a quick look at the meters. Like Goudreault-Emond says himself:
----
Content warning: the book presents only minimal violence and no sexual content. That said, the main character does use four letter swear words when life throws him a curve ball. Please bear with Mr. Cunningham; to say his day starts on the wrong foot is quite the understatement.
----
Sex-o-meter
As Goudreault-Emond says, there's no sex. A little bit of male gaze and boobies-and-booty description, but nothing too troubling. And Cunningham is pretty self-aware about it (no pun intended). I give this one a Bicentennial Man out of a possible Bi Centennial Man.
Gore-o-meter
Again, there's nothing much. There's action, some fight scenes and a whole lot of assorted sci-fi danger (Demeter is a rough place), but no gore. Half a flesh-gobbet out of a possible five.
WTF-o-meter
And there's not even much WTF, although the whole issue of human / AI symbiosis and parallel evolution is interesting, and the final chapters really blow things open and make for a very compelling backdrop for the past and future of the Demeter civilisation. Still, I'm only getting negligible WTF readings. I, Cunningham gets a mildly-disfigured dude with a vape pen out of a possible Guild Navigator on the WTF-o-meter.
My Final Verdict
Three and a half stars, which I will bump up to four for the Amazon / Goodreads scale because this sort of storytelling might not be for everyone, but it's for me and this is my review.
August 11, 2020
Gordon Cunningham died in a climbing accident in the twenty-second century, so he’s quite surprised to wake up five hundred years later in a robot body in a struggling colony in a distant solar system—only struggling is far too kind a word to describe the problems Gordon finds. The station AI and the station government are engaged in a sort of cold war with each other. At least two factions of the station population hate each other’s guts. There are intense frictions between basic humans and a genetically modified group. Oh, and the colony on the planet doesn’t get along with the station either. And that’s before you get into the rebels, religious cults, and illegal settlements that make Gordon’s new life even more difficult—because each faction wants to manipulate him into helping to bring about their personal vision of the perfect future for the colony. And if that isn’t bad enough, if Gordon can’t figure out what’s really going on, human life may die out in this future colony.
This is an impressive first novel with a couple of nicely interwoven mysteries fueling the action, but don’t stop when you finish the story. There’s a very nice afterword in which Goudreault-Emond discusses the influences that led him to write the book. It’s enjoyable all around.
I received this book free from Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
This is an impressive first novel with a couple of nicely interwoven mysteries fueling the action, but don’t stop when you finish the story. There’s a very nice afterword in which Goudreault-Emond discusses the influences that led him to write the book. It’s enjoyable all around.
I received this book free from Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.
If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.
August 14, 2020
This book is unique as far as anything I've read. It certainly hooks the reader from the start. I enjoyed following Gordon on his discovery of the station and himself. It was interesting to think of being somewhere completely unconnected from anything and anyone you've ever known and seems to give Gordon the confidence to do whatever is necessary without truly worrying about what will happen to him. While he continually asks himself why he is helping these people as it has nothing to do with him, he continues helping them anyway. This draws him deeper and deeper into the mysteries involved in why the inhabitants are failing on so many fronts. And then there's the rebels...
August 7, 2020
I loved this book. I struggled to put it down and finished in about 24 hours. Imagine yourself having a fall off a cliff and then waking up as a robot in the future on a space station on the other side of the universe. Then being asked by the AI that should have been in charge to investigate what is going wrong to cause the station to fail. It's definitely an interesting, addictive, thrilling scenario with lots of adventure, excitement and near death experiences. Do not start late at night as you will read through the night.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author via Voracious Readers Only.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author via Voracious Readers Only.
July 31, 2020
This is the first science fiction book written by this author, our son Benoit Goudreault-Emond. Artificial intelligence, robots, modified humans, space immigrants, unwelcoming planet, questionable terraforming, everything is there for lovers of the genre.
Sure, I’m a little biased. However, as a big consumer of books (4-5 books per month, on average), including a good taste for science fiction, I loved reading this first novel, especially since we can not guess before the last pages how everything ends. And the science backing the story is solid and well annotated.
I recommend it. It’s great entertainment, whether we are in lockdown because of the current pandemic or not.
Sure, I’m a little biased. However, as a big consumer of books (4-5 books per month, on average), including a good taste for science fiction, I loved reading this first novel, especially since we can not guess before the last pages how everything ends. And the science backing the story is solid and well annotated.
I recommend it. It’s great entertainment, whether we are in lockdown because of the current pandemic or not.
December 10, 2022
Disclaimer - I received a free copy of this book to review for the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC).
This book gets five stars because it meets the annoy test which is when you are so engaged in reading the book that you get annoyed when someone or something interrupts your reading.
I, Cunningham is Benoit Goudreault-Emond’s first novel and, hopefully, it is the first in a long series. For starters may I humbly suggest that he write a sequel to this one. His writing is clear, crisp, and engaging, his science founded on facts, his characters have depth and are entertaining, and his storyline original.
While Cunningham, for whom the book is named, is the main protagonist the storyline also revolves around his compatriots Norman and Station.
The action in this story begins immediately in chapter one with Norman performing a difficult EVA when the shuttle he is co-piloting is spinning out of control due to a stuck on steering thruster. Chapter two begins with the introduction of Cunningham who is awaking on a space station with his last memory being falling to his certain death while cliff climbing.
There is no crazy science and no attacking space aliens in this book. Instead there is an involved storyline, some hard science, a bunch of good, old fashioned Science Fiction themes, good people, bad people, and a dystopian background. Definitely a book worth reading and an author worth following.
This book gets five stars because it meets the annoy test which is when you are so engaged in reading the book that you get annoyed when someone or something interrupts your reading.
I, Cunningham is Benoit Goudreault-Emond’s first novel and, hopefully, it is the first in a long series. For starters may I humbly suggest that he write a sequel to this one. His writing is clear, crisp, and engaging, his science founded on facts, his characters have depth and are entertaining, and his storyline original.
While Cunningham, for whom the book is named, is the main protagonist the storyline also revolves around his compatriots Norman and Station.
The action in this story begins immediately in chapter one with Norman performing a difficult EVA when the shuttle he is co-piloting is spinning out of control due to a stuck on steering thruster. Chapter two begins with the introduction of Cunningham who is awaking on a space station with his last memory being falling to his certain death while cliff climbing.
There is no crazy science and no attacking space aliens in this book. Instead there is an involved storyline, some hard science, a bunch of good, old fashioned Science Fiction themes, good people, bad people, and a dystopian background. Definitely a book worth reading and an author worth following.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews